Editor’s Note: The recent botched executions of three death row inmates – Joseph R.Wood III in Arizona in mid-July, Clayton Lockett in Oklahoma in April and Dennis McGuire in Ohio in January – have brought the death penalty issue under intense scrutiny once again. Wood reportedly gasped for air some 600 times over the course of two hours after being injected. Longtime anti-death penalty crusaderSister Helen Prejean, author ofDead Man Walking,has been a spiritual adviser to many death row inmates in her home state of Louisiana. She shared her thoughts on the latest executions with NAM health editor Viji Sundaram.

How do you respond to those who say the botched execution of convicted double murderer Joseph Wood does not amount to torture?

People can say that even if he suffered excruciating pain, he did not suffer as much as the two people he killed. But we should not lose our moral bearings. The state should not decide whom to kill. The U.S. Supreme Court said the death penalty is only to be reserved for the worst of the worst crimes. But nobody knows what that means. Look at the application of the death penalty. Who has been selected to die? Only poor people. Close to 80 percent of executions have happened in the 10 states that practiced slavery.

We have signed on to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that says no one should be subjected to torture. In my years of work with death row inmates, I have witnessed their suffering as they watch their fellow inmates led off to the death chamber. Putting people on death row is nothing short of inflicting mental torture on them.

How is it that states are given license to administer the drugs that are being blamed for the botched executions?

The Supreme Court has given absolute power to the states to choose the means of killing them, but is not asking for transparency from them. Prisons are experimenting with new drug protocols to compromise for the drugs that have traditionally been used in executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. As TV host Rachel Maddow said, (states) are conducting medical experimentation on human beings to see what it takes to kill a person. Those three people were supposed to die quickly, but they did not.

The whole system of the death penalty is botched, from the Supreme Court down. The court has set out guidelines that are unconstitutional. Everything is botched when it comes to human rights.

Earlier this month, Judge Cormac J. Carney of the Central District of California wrote that the death penalty is carried out inconsistently in the state, in a random and arbitrary manner with few executions. How might his words impact the debate ahead?

Judge Carney is right. Even as far back as 1994, [Supreme Court] Justice Harry Blackmun said that the death penalty experiment in the U.S. has failed after 20 years of trying to make it work. Of the more than 900 death sentences carried out in California since 1978, only 13 have resulted in executions. Further, 94 death row inmates have died of natural causes, and 39 were granted relief from their sentence in the federal courts. Carney’s ruling could encourage challenges in other jurisdictions.

In 1997, you asked Pope John Paul II to strengthen the Catholic Church’s teaching by closing its loopholes on the death penalty issue. Do you think it’s only a matter of time before Pope Francis says no to the death penalty?

There are preliminary steps being taken, quiet overtures being made, to people who have contact with the pope. Given that he visited a prison within a couple of weeks after he became pope, given his messages of the need to help the poor, I have no doubt where his heart will be, especially toward the despised. I am optimistic that he will spark life into the Catholic bishops to be actively engaged in ending the death penalty.

But for right now, what’s the road out of this?

The United States is among only a handful of developed nations that still employs the death penalty. It should follow the example of the nations that have moved away from it. The death penalty should be taken off the table.

4 Responses to “Helen Prejean: The ‘Whole Death Penalty System is Botched’”

“In 1989, (Wood) hunted down and shot to death his former girlfriend, Debra Dietz, and her father, Eugene Dietz.” (1)

“Debra Dietz’s sister, Jeanne Brown, who was at the execution, said, ‘Everybody here said (the execution) was excruciating. You don’t know what excruciating is. Seeing your dad lying there in a pool of blood, seeing your sister lying there in a pool of blood, that’s excruciating.’ ” (1)

“No one who witnessed the execution has said Wood ever woke up. It simply took a long time for him to die.” (1)

“(Arizona Department of Corrections Director Charles Ryan) said IV lines in the inmate’s arms were “perfectly placed” and insisted that Wood felt no pain. ” (2)

He is correct (3), there could have been no pain, only sedation, sleep, coma and death (with apnea, shortness of breath, weezing, other noises, etc. common).

“Anesthesiology experts say they’re not surprised that the combination of drugs took so long to kill Wood.” (2)

“This doesn’t actually sound like a botched execution. This actually sounds like a typical scenario if you used that drug combination,” said Karen Sibert, an anesthesiologist and associate professor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Sibert was speaking on behalf of the California Society of Anesthesiologists.” (2)

“Dr. Zivot said that midazolam acts ‘like a key in a lock,’ attaching to a receptor in the body and causing sedation. Once the receptor is saturated, he said, ‘it doesn’t matter if you give the person 500 additional doses or five million doses. It won’t have any more effect.’ ” (4)

“The documents showed that Mr. Ryan personally directed the execution team to use the additional (14) doses. In his statement, Mr. Ryan said the doses ensured that ‘(Wood) remained deeply sedated throughout the process, and did not endure pain.” ” (4).

For an equally peaceful death, but a quicker one, use pentobarbital or nitrogen gas.

” ‘(Wood’s) sedation level was continually monitored and verified by the IV team,’ Mr. Ryan said. The intravenous team included a doctor, he said.” (4)

Wood’s breathing, weezing and/or gasping is a product of respiratory distress, as expected.

Very basic. Very easy, just as with the Ohio execution of Dennis McGuire (5), another case where folks jumped to the wrong conclusions.

DRUG MANUFACTURERS ETHICS

For alleged ethical reasons, companies have denied execution jurisdictions the use of the preferred drugs sodium thiopental and pancuronium bromide in the execution of guilty murderers, even though those same companies still approve them for euthanasia for innocent humans and animals.

If judges had to rule on all abortions and some states allowed abortions only 0-10% of the time and others at 70-90% of the time, do you think folks would blame abortion or the political position of the judges?

Guess.

Federal Judge Carney declares long stays on death row, in California, unconstitutional, thereby extending stays on death row by 5 years or more, based upon how slowly California cases make it through the appellate judicial system – a system that just keeps on creating more and more delay, as intended . . . by the judges.

Had California judges acted in a responsible matter, since California’s new death penalty statutes were enacted in 1978, then California would have about 111 death row inmates, today (1), would be able to, properly, manage that number, execute within 7 to 11 years, on average, and finalize non executed inmates appeals, within that same time frame, while managing new additions to death row.

Virginia has the most efficient death penalty system (2).

If California duplicated Virginia’s results, through 2012, there would have been 703 executions (72%) and 175 (18%) would have been removed from death row, by appeals and commutations, and there would be about 80 death row inmates in California, today, and Ca could, responsibly, manage those and new cases.

California has executed 13 or 1.3%.

All of the problems on California’s death row are a result of judicial mismanagement, which, I suggest, was intentional and has resulted in this, predictable, train wreck — a judicially created disaster, with over 740 death row inmates.

One of the more idiotic statements by Judge Carney, from this decision, is:

“California’s death penalty system is so plagued by inordinate and unpredictable delay that the death sentence is actually carried out against only a trivial few of those sentenced to death.”

Delays have been inordinate and ‘predictable’ for two decades, based upon judicial mismanagement.

We have criminal sociopath’s on death row and judges running the death penalty system into the ground.

It’s long past time to reduce both their numbers.

If the judges cared one wit about justice, the innocent murder victims, the law, the California citizens and their money, they would have properly managed death penalty cases, instead of what they have done, which is just the opposite.

The California death penalty system is a train wreck, because the judges are the conductors.

1) Properly managed California death penalty system – speculative, based upon reality in other jurisdictions.

With executions beginning in 1990, with average times on death row, from 7-11 years, prior to execution and 17 executions/yr, on average, since 1990, 12 years after new death penalty statutes. For appeals to take 7-11 years, that would be 3-6 years for state appeals and 3-6 years for federal appeals

This is a system much less efficient than Virginia’s, but still responsible, meaning impossible by California judicial standards.